In the past few months, I reviewed the various steps of product asset management:
- How to streamline your packaging processes
- How to work faster with digital libraries
- How to make your photo studio smarter
- How to improve the creative content for your marketing campaigns
- How to better use content for digital prototyping
- How to create efficient content portals
Today is the last post of this series and we’re going to see that even after products hit store shelves or go live on an e-commerce site, content-hungry processes don’t go away. Sales and support teams still need access to product content to provide valuable information to customers. For many customers, these teams are a key source of information before, during, and after a purchase.
Sales teams, in particular, must have access to information in upstream departments. 73% of sales teams say collaborating across departments is absolutely critical or very important to their overall sales process.
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Modern customers have high expectations of sales and support teams and expect them to know their products in detail. As a result, downstream teams must have access to in-depth product information in context.
However, in many product companies, sales and customer support employees don’t have access to important product information, making it difficult to answer basic questions and provide a service that keeps customers coming back for more. Disparate platforms must be replaced with a unified solution to maximize visibility.
Limitations of Ad-Hoc Product Knowledge Management
The ad-hoc legacy solutions that many companies use to manage product information are out of date. Companies with multiple disconnected solutions often struggle to connect downstream teams to upstream product information. In this environment, sales teams waste time getting access to the info they need.
When Nuxeo spoke with product companies about their current product knowledge systems and workflows, there were three main complaints:
- Support teams rely on disconnected resources that include out-of-date information about materials and composition, measurements, and other important product data. They have no reliable way to determine which information is current.
- Experienced sales and support personnel may be able to fulfill customer requests for information, but new team members take a long time to train. New hires can take months or years to become fully skilled at finding the correct product information.
- Sales and support representatives use Google and other unauthorized search tools to fulfill customer requests for information because their own systems take too long to search. Inaccurate results create a poor customer experience.
All three of these challenges can have a devastating impact on the customer experience. A representative who cannot answer a customer’s question in detail correctly could lose their business.
If your sales team can’t answer basic questions about your products because they don’t have access to the right information, your customers will be reluctant to contact them and buy from the people who can give them the answers they need.
Read how CVS modernized its knowledge management processes to enable CVS customer care representatives to quickly access the most current coverage details for their customers’ plans.
The Nuxeo Platform: Up-to-date Product Information in Context
The Nuxeo Platform eliminates the downstream disconnect by putting up-to-date Product Knowledge Management at your support teams’ fingertips in one platform. From one location, sales and support teams can navigate through all your product information spread across multiple systems.
When responding to a support request, the Nuxeo Platform acts as the “connective tissue” that displays information from multiple systems that don’t “talk to one another.” The platform updates product information automatically whenever changes are made in other systems.
Greater Accuracy for Sales and Support Teams
By integrating data throughout the Product Asset Management process in one place, support teams can have access to information that’s always accurate and updated. Correct information equips representatives to understand customer issues in context and respond to queries more effectively.
When a customer makes a request for information, the representative can feel confident in the answers they give, which increases customer satisfaction as customers get provided with valuable guidance that drives their buyer journey forward.
With the Nuxeo Platform, any team with a high impact on customer experience can access information created at multiple points in the Product Asset Management process. For example, a rep can view everything from the specific materials or ingredients used in a particular batch number, to the retailers who stock a product near a consumer’s zip code.
Read our infographic about the importance of customer experience in retail
Unlock Streamlined Product Knowledge Management with Nuxeo
Connecting your product information through the Nuxeo Platform gives your upstream and downstream teams everything needed to streamline product delivery. Products take less time to reach store shelves, and the customer experience also improves.
Once the product hits shelves, support teams are armed with a mountain of product information through enhanced Product Knowledge Management so that they can provide in-depth answers to customer questions.
Nuxeo Platform is leading the push towards a next-generation product knowledge management process with omnidirectional information exchange, that amplifies the voice of the customer so you can create more successful products based on direct feedback from downstream teams.
To learn more about how Nuxeo can give your sales and customer support representatives instant access to upstream product content in context, visit nuxeo.com/pam.